Review: [Prototype]

Activision brings us another dark hero to love. The [Prototype], codenamed Zeus brings you the amazement of so many dark and wondrous variants to use and love in killing the enemy, again an overzealous police state run amuck. You can’t help but root for the dark hero.

You’ll be playing as Alex Mercer, known by the black ops units as Zeus. Mercer has lost his memory and must gain it back one soldier or scientist at a time as he absorbs them in order to consume their memories and thereby adding to his strength. What Mercer does know is that it all has something to with a government experiment that has gone terribly wrong causing a viral outbreak that has overwhelmed Manhattan almost completely. And Mercer knows that somehow he and a woman are at the heart of the experiment.

Now Alex finds himself with an arsenal of shape-shift into those people he absorbs, and upgrade his powers as he goes along. What powers you may ask? One word…wow. Alex can run up the side of buildings, jump incredibly high into the air, transform an arm into a shield, claws, hammers, a whip with claws that tears people in two, the ability to pick up and throw heavy objects such as cars, and so much more. The game is really pretty absorbing itself.

There are a number of missions which Alex finds he must complete in order to regain his memory and hopefully himself back. But this is a huge open world in which Alex may choose his own course and play the game in just about any manner you wish. There are skills tests all over the city there you may earn points with which to purchase more skills, and not just a few either. These side trips are really quite nice changes of pace whether its running a course of way points across the top of buildings, splitting as many people in half as possible, and much more.

But unlike other heroes, mercer really faces no moral choices. His only goal seems to be to destroy those who made all of this viral nastiness possible. So for the most part, mercer finds himself running around and slashing and consuming as many people as possible in order to keep his energy level high, with very little difference in the game play. Though there is a certain fun in this kind of game play.

Keeping the action going are some really nice graphics and animations that keep the game interesting. But there is really nothing exceptional to the sound…a lot of screaming going on mostly, but the voice acting is not bad and keeps the flow to the story. The NPC AI is not bad though as the crowd reacts to Alex’s changes and doesn’t just go around doing their business as usual. Alex whips out his claws and the people in his immediate area freak out and run for the hills.

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You’ll find that if you push it, you can pretty much finish the game in about 21 hours or so, and if you take your time you can get some more out of it. With no multiplay aspect to the game, there is really not much replay ability to [Prototype].

Overall, running up buildings and gliding through the city, and rampaging through Manhattan does have its fun and exciting points and I can easily recommend [Prototype] as a lot of fun. This is not one of those that I would suggest as a rental…go ahead and buy this one on its first run. You’ll get your fun out of it for sure. You may even find yourself wanting to play it a 2nd time through, but again maybe not. Just enjoy the dark fun of it.

Score: 8.0 (out of 10)

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